The Costs And Benefits Of Participating In Competitive Debate Activities:

The Benefits and Costs of Participating in Competitive Debate Activities:

Differences Between Japanese and American College Students

Narahiko INOUE

Faculty of Languages & Cultures

Kyushu University, Japan

Mika NAKANO

Graduate Student, Graduate School of Social & Cultural Studies

Kyushu University, Japan

Paper presented at

Wake Forest University/International Society for the Study of Argumentation

"Venice Argumentation Conference"

June 27-30, 2004

0. Introduction

For over decades now, debate (dibeeto in Japanese) has been the focus of much attention in Japan. This is reflected in the frequency of the word "debate" in major Japanese newspapers, which shows a clear increase for a period of about twenty years. As Table 1 and Figure 1 show, the number of articles containing the word "debate" was zero in 1987. In 2003, however, this figure had risen to 349 (Inoue, 1994; Nakano, 2004, p. 1). This shows that "debate" has rapidly gained popularity in Japanese society. One reason for this rise in popularity is that debate has been recognized as an important skill for Japanese to communicate effectively in the globalized world. Much has been discussed over the use of debate in classroom activities in such courses as sciences and social studies as well as language courses of Japanese and English from elementary school to university.

Table 1: Articles containing "debate" in major newspapers 1985 - 2003

Figure 1: Articles containing "debate" in major newspapers 1985 - 2003

Out in the world today there are diversified styles of competitive debating in English available for students. Long time ago when debating was brought to the American continent from Britain, it was just debating. Then Britons and Americans followed different paths. British debating remained armature activities, which later became institutionalized as Parliamentary Debate spreading to the world. American educators and scholars developed their own so-called Academic Debate, or NDT. Only recently did American scholars turn to Parliamentary Debate as one of the alternative styles.

Against this background, the current paper will discuss the benefits and costs associated with participating in competitive debate activities by analyzing the perceptions collected from Japanese college students. It will also examine the features of Parliamentary Debate (PD hereafter)[1] in contrast to more traditional NDT-style debate.[2] The results will also be compared with a similar survey in the U.S. There are three reasons why this paper will discuss these themes.

Firstly, the available research, especially empirical research about PD, is scarce. In Japan, PD was first introduced in 1990 by the International Debate Institute (Kawahatsu, 1990, June 19). Because of its short history, there have been no studies on PD except for the series of work by Nakano. In the U.S. there have been a number of debate studies but most of them are concerned with the more traditional debate styles, such as NDT and CEDA. It is only recently that PD has been taken up as a research topic in the field of forensics and argumentation. Since most of the previous studies on PD were conducted in the U.S., some factors were ignored, for example, English as a second language and international comparisons. As debate becomes more diversified and globalized, research on debate should consider such factors as well.

Secondly, PD has several unique characteristics. It is unique in its orientation toward extemporaneous and audience-focused speeches, which is different from the styles many studies have centered on up until now. Moreover, PD is widely used all over the world, and the number of people participating in PD is increasing year by year. One of the reasons for this was made clear by the research on debate Nakano conducted in Asian countries. One of its findings points to the increasing need for education in English communication skills that has arisen as a result of globalization (Nakano, 2002).

Thirdly, an empirical approach has not been used much in debate studies in Japan. Apart from studies such as Inoue (1994), who discussed how English Speaking Societies conducted debates as an extracurricular activity in Japanese universities and Kamada (2000), who for over a decade researched the effects of debate training on business people in Japan, the number of empirical studies that examine the costs and benefits of debate participation is quite small. Mikuma (2003) warns that the hasty introduction of debate into classrooms may be dangerous without considering the historical praxis of debate in extracurricular activities, which he claims were ignored by researchers (p. 138). While debate is advocated by some as a panacea to today's education problems, the costs as well as the benefits of debate need to be examined empirically. Such an empirical approach is also effective for examining the unique characteristics of PD.

Thus the problems of previous studies can be summarized as follows:

1. The number of studies covering PD is limited.

2. The characteristics of PD in English should be investigated, especially the perceptions of non-native speakers of English.

3. Empirical data are needed to assess the costs and benefits of debate participation.

This paper is intended to fill these gaps in research and will contribute to the discussion of the relative merits and demerits of different styles of debate across different cultural contexts. In order to allow the Japanese and American comparison, this research follows the method used by Williams, McGee, & Worth (2001), who compared the participants' perceptions in different debate styles in the U.S. In the remaining of this paper, Section 1 will review previous studies about competitive debate in more detail; Section 2 will explain the method of research; Section 3 will present the results and discussion; and Section 4 will summarize the finding.

1. Review of Previous Studies

This section reviews previous debate studies in Japan and abroad. Recently in Japan teaching debate and studying debate have attracted more and more attention with dissemination of the word "debate" in Japanese society. In particular, discussions on introducing debate into education have been boosted in various school subjects such as Japanese, English, social studies, and sciences. PD, however, has rarely attracted attention until now. One of the earlier publications discussing PD, or British debating, was Milward (1983), who recommended British debate instead of American debate, which was dominant in Japan. Inoue (1984) described debate tournaments in Britain, who pointed out the absence of British debating in Japan at that time as follows:

We can even read a transcript of the American National Debate Tournament with extensive Japanese notes. But British debating is hardly noticed in Japan currently although many American textbooks do give some accounts of it. (p. 31)[3]

Later, in 1990 when the International Debate Institute introduced PD to Japanese students, PD activities formally began in some universities. In 1995, International Christian University's Debating Society published the first version of a practical handbook of PD, Essence of Parliamentary Debate (ICU Debating Society, 1999). Yet today, Japan still lacks detailed studies on PD with the exception of Nakano (2002, 2004).

Similarly, the number of studies about PD is relatively small in the U.S. The traditional popularity of other debate styles such as NDT and CEDA appears to have prevented PD from prevailing among students. In Britain, although PD has a long history led by Oxford Union, PD has not been much studied academically. This is probably because communication in general was not considered a subject of academic research in Britain.

After a debate tour between the U.S. and Britain co-sponsored by the Speech Communication Association (SCA)[4] and the English Speaking Union in 1921 (Baird, 1950, p. 311), impressions and evaluations of both styles were take up in American journals (for example; Howes, 1925, 1928; Freeth & Cradock, 1949). While some of them took a critical stance toward the British style, others suggested adopting an element of British debate in U.S. (Baird, 1923; Quimby, 1947). This fact shows that there were debates over PD in the U.S. even though it has not been well known. One question that arises here is why American educators seem to have ignored PD until recently, long after British and American debates were separated. Cox & Phillips (1992), who wrote about the later-established American Parliamentary Debate Association (APDA), suggests that the unnecessary association with cross-cultural problems can be the answer as they stated:

The American Parliamentary Debate Association provides a good example of parliamentary debate without the cross-cultural problems plaguing discussion of British versus American debating. (p. 94)

Overly emphasized cultural differences rather than styles and rules themselves may have delayed PD activities and studies in the U.S.

In 1990, a PD study of Sheckels & Warfield (1990) in the Journal of American Forensic Association led to bring PD to light. They wrote, "Largely student-run, parliamentary debate has escaped the attention of speech communication scholars" (p. 86). In the same year, the faculty-run National Parliamentary Debate Association was founded, which published its own professional journal, Parliamentary Debate. At the point in time, with its more international popularity, PD was adopted in more U.S. colleges, and this in turn made PD attract more attention as a legitimate topic in speech communication studies.

The unique aspects of PD in argumentation and research method have been pointed out in papers by Williams (1993) and Epstein (1996). After Galizio & Knapp (1998) published the first manual of PD in the U.S. in 1998 (Tindell, 1998, p.187), Meany & Schuster (2002, 2003) wrote comprehensive books of PD. A noteworthy point is that all of the PD studies mentioned communication-orientation, extemporaneous speech and variety of resolutions as its characteristics, which are different from NDT and CEDA debates. This shows that these essences of PD are recognized as its values when Americans engage in PD in English.

As to studies of assessing the efficacy of participation in debate, a fairly large amount of research has been conducted by using various methods (McGee & Simerly, 1994; Standfield, 1993; Steinberg, 1993). Most of them were surveys of college students' perception with self-report questionnaires (e.g., Hill, 1982; Jones, 1994; Matlon & Keele, 1984; Wood & Rowland-Morin, 1989; Willimans, McGee, & Worth, 2001) with notable exceptions of Semlak & Shields (1977) and Littlefield (2001) dealing with high school students. Glenn (2000) researched debaters' motivations to choose one of the debate styles. When we turn to studies on debate in Japan, empirical studies on debate have seldom appeared in communication literature. As to the surveys of the participants, quantitative data have been rare the exception of Klopf (1978) and Nakamura (1982).

Williams et al. (2001) stated the necessity of empirical studies on debate participation with two rationales (p. 198-99). Firstly, we should assess students' impressions of debate regularly since debaters' life is changing time to time as we have changes in coaching practice, method of collecting information, travel pattern and so on. The survey method also needs to be tested for validity. The past 10 years only saw two studies: Jones (1994), which is now about 10 yeas old, and Williams et al (2001). Secondly, intercollegiate debate community has changed, and various styles should be compared. Especially PD has several points which are distinguished by NDT and CEDA. It was first empirically investigated by Williams et al., but in Japan no previous study has tried to account for PD. It is necessary to examine PD for more comprehensive understanding of competitive debating in particular and Speech Communication at large.

2. Method

2.1. Research Questions

This paper reports part of a larger study that tries to answer 7 research questions below. Numbers 1-4 are the same questions that Williams et al. (2001) used, and Numbers 5-7 were newly added for this study. This paper discusses research questions 1-5.

1. What benefits do students perceive from their participation in intercollegiate debate?

2. What disadvantages do students perceive from their participation in intercollegiate debate?

3. How do students' perceived benefits compare to those revealed in previous studies?

4. How do students' perceived disadvantages compare to those revealed in previous studies?

5. Do answers vary according to debate styles?

6. What motivations do students have from their participation in intercollegiate debate?

7. Are there any correlations between benefits and motivations?

2.2. Participants of the Survey

Respondents are the participants of NDT and PD. NDT-style debate and PD are the two styles of debate in the English language which are dominantly popular among college students in Japan. Williams et al. (2001) included other styles such as CEDA in addition to these two styles, but this survey in Japan does not include them since they are not practiced in Japan. For uniform sampling, the participants in one of the national tournaments for each style in 2003 were surveyed by gang survey when most of the participants gathered in one place: at the announcement of the qualifiers for the elimination tournament (NDT-style) and at the end of the final round (PD). The response rates of this survey are shown in Table 2.